Today we're at the house of Jimmy Branly, an up and coming drummer from Havana, Cuba. Jimmy arrived in the United States almost three years ago and is making his way as a musician in Los Angeles, California.

Believe it or not, I'm doing my first solo album.

I made the room soundproof just for practicing and when I finished it I liked the sound of the room. That made me think about recording in the room. Sometimes you go to a studio and you don’t like the sound of your drums. I'm using a pretty inexpensive digital recorder. But it sounds great! I'm also using a 12 track mixer and good mics. I use headphones to mix.

I mean sometime you do a record and you say "let's play this melody different so people can understand". That's not the way I wanna do it. I wanna do it the way I want, for me. Something that in Cuba, if I had this in Cuba I would do it without thinking about selling it. You make music for musicians. Here you make music for the crowd, for everyone. It's like a demo too, something that I give to people. Actually I'm not writing the songs. Every night I play with bass and click. Then in the morning I play along with the drums and that's how the song comes.

I would love to sell the album but its gonna be hard. For example I'm gonna have a really rock and roll song that the keyboard John Gillutin is helping me with. It's a rock song in 4. Another song is a trio, straight ahead, piano, acoustic bass and a small kit. Another songs gonna be you know Cuban with timbales. Another will be like Latin Jazz, mixing straight ahead with Latin. For the Latin Jazz tune I'm having Roberto Carcasses on piano, Yosvani Terry on sax, and Luis Eric on trumpet. These guys are all from Cuba. They came to my house on recorded here. Since I'm doing it at my house, I can take my time.

So far, John Giluttin, a great keyboardist, is helping me a lot producing all the "American" parts of my project. I'm going to have Sandro Albert on guitar. It's really low budget. So low that they're gonna have to do it for love! They want to do it! I want to have my album with great players and be able to listen to my music on CD. It's hard to do a project like this in Cuba. Sometimes in recording studios in Cuba, you don't end up with good drum sounds.

I did a lot of recording at EGREM. My first project was when I was 14, a nueva trova thing with electric drums. I recorded with Hernan Lopez Nussa Quartet, a project called "Figuraciones". Cuarto Espacio with Omar Hernandez and Hernan. We did an album in Venezuela and one in Cuba too. I recorded with Isaac Delgado, "El Año Que Viene", and with NG La Banda. With Isaac I'm playing drums and timbales. Jose Miguel, a great Cuban musician, is also playing timbales on that album. In Cuba that's the new thing. Play drums and play different pattern than the timbalero.

Unbalanced is the name of my CD. My album is gonna have many styles. I wanna do everything professional including the packaging. Hey, if I can put it in stores and sell it, it would be great but it's not my first intention. You have to listen to one of the songs. You'll hear that people will be asking, "wow, where's the one". That's the first thing you're gonna say. But I don't care I mean I would love people to understand. It's important to give some new stuff to people. It would great for people to learn something from me like I;m learning from them.

Well, I've been here for almost two and a half years. I've learned a lot. When I first came here I started playing like crazy. Like everyone I learn what groove means. Like everyone I've learned how to keep the groove for at least two minutes without doing anything else. It's something that makes me glad I'm here. Because in Cuba it's different. There is no competition. So that's why they play what they want, how they want. If they had a producer saying "try to keep this part grooving because of the dancers...", that's not the way we work in Cuba. Here it's different. If you go in the studio and start overplaying they're gonna call someone else. And I don't think it's just because of producers. It's also being a musician. You should be able to respect music to respect what's happening in the band your playing, to leave space for other players so you're not all the time on top of someone.

In Cuba everyone is playing on top of everyone. But the thing is it sounds good. Because what your playing you need what the other guy is playing to make it work. What your doing doesn't work by itself. You need the other guy overplaying on top of you at the same time. In that way it sounds like one instrument. That's the concept behind the new Timba, the new latin style, the new fusion. It's a contemporary thing. Here it doesn’t happen like that. It's different. And what I have in mind in my brain is jazz. I love that word, Jazz. I'm not a jazz player. I love to play everything. Now that I'm here I think I'm a musician. I'm someone that wants to be part of everything.

Life, concepts of life. You know, the system, taxes, bills. I met my wonderful wife Carolyn who is helping me with the system here.

What's the music business like in Cuba?

In Cuba we have what we call "empresas", like companies or enterprises. Like a union. Different unions. Like, there are some in Havana, like EGREM and Beny Moré. All those companies have hundreds of groups and they pay them a salary. So they have to be together rehearsing every day, like five hours, and they play almost every day in different places. It isn't for free they have a salary but that salary doesn't help. I was with different empresas. We don’t have to be worried about the phone cause they call you all the time. You don’t say "no". Sometimes they give you the whole month schedule. My last few months there I was doing OK. I was playing with NG la Banda. There are some groups that make more than others. Mist musicians make 138 Cuban pesos. Everyone lives with their family. You don’t pay rent, you don’t pay too much. You don’t have anything, but what you have is cheap. When I made dollars I could go to shops and buy better food.

In my neighborhood there's a store called La Epoca. You know in Cuba, years ago you could buy three toys a year. The name is Basic. No Basic and Regular. Basic is like a big toy like a bike. No basic is a baseball bat and the regular is like a toy soldier or something like that. Three toys a year. My first toy was a little drum. And I put my own snare. It's just had two heads. I opened the drum and poout some rice inside and that made the sound.

I used to paint before , for three years, I did water polo, then I did swimming. Then I did painting I was playing with the back of the brushes and the professor said man you should go to music school. And I started….Manuel Saumel school and then to the ENA (Escuela Nacional del Arte or the National School of Arts).

I started studying when I was 13. When I was twelve I went to take the test to get into the school but I couldn’t pass because they wanted me to sing. I didn’t want to sing. I was so concentrated on my drums and my music. I was always at home practicing. Everything was cool…I was doing some doubles outside at the school. When you start at the school no one does that, plays good doubles. It's something you learn four years later. One of the teachers came and said, "man, how did you do that?" He took me in front of the line and he took me in to audition. They asked me to play piano so I dd. Then they said sing. I didn’t and then I lost that year, just because I didn’t sing. I was missing that school for a year. The next year I sang the National Hymn of Cuba and I got in!

Then I went to the ENA but I didn’t even finish the first year! I never wanted to play anything else then drum set. They teach you classical music I think based on the Russian way of teaching. I didn’t like that system of learning and I just want t play drums. Julio Barretto (Barretico) left Cuarto Espacio to play with Rubalcaba The leaders of the band came to the school. I was a little kid, only 16 years old. They asked me" hey do you want to play with us?" I left the school right away! Barretico is one of the greatest drummers. He's a great rumbero and at the same time he has a great technique for drums. He' not a timbalero, he's a drummer. A lot of people in Cuba are percussionists and they sit at the drums and they play what they know. But it’s a different thing from being a drummer.

Here I learned about the sound of the drums. How to tune the drums. In Cuba you still are looking for an almost electrical sound on he toms. Everyone uses the 8 and 10. I prefer a more natural sound. I also learned to play a lot less.

You know I have to be here for a half a year before I can tour. Im doing gigs, sessions, I'm teaching a lot at home. ALSO right no I'm working on my album. I just did a tour with Strunz and Farrah, percussion with John Sebastian, a famous Mexican singer. A small tour with Rebecca Mauleon-Santana.

I have some students that are really interested in Cuba stuff, how to develop what they know. What I do, first of all, how to listen and how to learn from listening. Sometimes you teach patterns and that;' not the shit. Listen to the music and try and copy what they're playing and try to know why they're playing that. The bass player did something, the drummer did something. You try and understand why and how that happens. At the beginning they want patters. Now they want to learn the concept, which is a different thing from the patterns. They want to develop the concept. I tell them they’re always going to be learning. Every day I'm learning something new from my own music. I don't have to be in Cuba. I have the thing in my blood. I can feel every day something that come to my hands and I can play something different. And they're doing the same. My students, they say, Man I can never be like you. And I tell them I don’t want you to be like me. I want you to be like yourself.

The first thing I do with a new student is we start to play. I play bass so we have a duo. We start with some American style. When he's more free I try and add a little bit of Cuba a little bit with the bass. They play their songo patterns. Then we stop. I say let's play some more funk. So we groove and I tell them OK you keep playing funk I'm going to Cuba. You stay here in the United States. And I change the groove. The student usually finds a new groove, not songo. Then stop right there and we listen to the different styles. You have to listen to the different styles not only from Cuba but Brasil also has its own style. Everyone has a special thing. The Cuban think is that there are so many rhythms, so many ways to develop the clave. It's like I told you. The clave is a little thing that hiding in a big box. You can take a lot of stuff from the clave. How do you explain it. For me the clave is not that important. For other people it's more important. In Cuba the clave comes with the music. They're not worried are we in 2-3 or 3-2. They just play the music. When you play a rock groove or a rock groove you aren't thinking about "let me keep the hi hat here and the snare here". You know that's what's supposed to be. When you here a funk bass line you know what's needed. In Cuban music we know2 exactly what the music needs.

I love to talk a lot with my students. Where I come from, what we eat, why we play like that, why we shouldn’t play like that here. I have a student who’s crazy about Cuban drummers. He wants all the stuff. So I show him but I tell him he has to be careful. He may end up playing with himself in his house, all by himself! And its not only about money. It's a bit too complicated for this music. If you go to Cuba you have to play that way. If Cubans come here, I believe in being able to adapt to your environment here. So I've been learning not too take away, but for a little while put some stuff in the big box again, just keep it. Keep it. Maybe one day if I become famous I can do my own shit. But for now I want to do what everyone else is doing but my way you know. Playing what they want you to play. My way is a style but I'm playing what they want me to play.

What's my style? The sound is the first thing. The dynamics. The fills are another thing. Cubans have a really open way to play. So many fills, so many different ideas. We have timbale, conga, drum set concepts and we mix all that. We have 6/8, 4/4. Sometimes you do half a fill in 6 , half in 4 so it's a lot of creativity. And you can do it here but you don’t want to complicate your playing. But the music here may not need that level. You have to know and feel what fits for the music you're playing.